Summary:

Chapter Text

As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk.

Anyone observing this scene would have seen me, crouched against the wall, head bent down, looking like someone who should have been dead. I had just barely escaped death, and I could still feel its cold hand around my lungs.

Despite the crushing sensation of helplessness, I kept my eyes and ears open. The banter between Sherlock and Moriarty treaded quietly around the pool. Sherlock’s hand was steady, pointing the gun unwaveringly at the other man.

I didn’t pay too much attention to that, though. I paid attention to the little red dot, shining on the back of Sherlock’s jacket. One precisely timed wink from Moriarty and my best friend could be splattered over the floor.

There I was, crouched against the wall, preparing for a leap into the path of a bullet to save my friend. I just had to watch Moriarty’s face, look for that signal...

But then Sherlock glanced at me. And the whole situation rearranged itself. It was a quick glance, no more than a second. But I knew what he was thinking.

Moriarty was a danger, not just to Sherlock, or me, or even London. He was a danger to the entire world. Sherlock and I were insignificant, really, compared to the disaster he could orchestrate. If we both died while bringing him down, it would be worth it.

So I nodded. And Sherlock brought the gun down from its sights on Moriarty’s head to point at the bomb.

The time it took for his finger to pull the trigger was long enough for the world to be created and destroyed several times. It was certainly long enough for me to change position. By the time the end of the gun exploded, I was in the air, hurling myself into Sherlock, into the pool.

He didn’t move, went limp in my arms. I felt the explosion behind us and I breathed in before the waves of sound and fire pushed us further through the air.

A crushing whiteness enveloped us. I couldn’t do anything. All my senses were overloaded. All I could see and hear was rushing white. I think it was so loud, my hearing had shut down.

All I was really conscious of at that moment was the fear of not surviving this. And then the fact that we hadn’t hit the water in the pool yet.

I knew time was going slowly, but that slowly? No, that wouldn’t work. I might have tried to open my eyes to see what was going on, or maybe to check if we were both dead already, or something.

Either way, I couldn’t see anything, due to either the whiteness of the explosion, or that my face was buried in Sherlock’s black jacket.

I exhaled. Then we hit the water.

We must have sunk about ten feet. The significance of that wasn’t even apparent, even when my lungs almost burst from trying to get to the surface. Sherlock was a lot heavier than he looked. He was also extremely awkward to carry.

My head finally broke the surface, but it was either too bright to see anything or my vision was badly damaged from the explosion.

Thoughts whirled around my head with no order. I think I first subconsciously realized something was wrong when my feet hit the muddy bottom of the pool. Somewhere in my brain, it registered that pools didn’t have muddy bottoms.

That didn’t matter as much as getting Sherlock out of the water, though. He seemed to have doubled in weight but I dragged him and myself out of the water. I bent over him to check if he was still breathing, or if I needed to administer CPR. My numb fingers felt for his wrist, or his neck, I’m not positive.